The white wraith closed the tomb with a groan of effort. It bent over the bundle and gently pulled the sheet aside.
‘Ah, me, cette petite. Quelle dommage.’
It lifted the bundle from the bricks and carried it away, until they were both swallowed up in the inky shadows.
A sickly yellow flash of lightning illuminated the ‘deadhouses’ in the cemetery. Thunder sounded a rolling boom in the distance.
The first thing Delice heard was the storm. Fat raindrops thrummed on the tin roof, but it would bring no relief to the stifling August night. ‘
Ce pauve, ce pauve
,’ crooned a strange, soft alto voice. Skirts rustled as the voice’s owner moved about the room.
The voice and the rain and the whisper of fabric were very soothing to her. She had not had many peaceful moments in her short life, so she lay quite still, taking small breaths. She did not want the spell broken nor the moment lost.
A warm hand touched her cheek.
‘
Ma pauve
, wake up now.’
Delice opened her eyes.
A tall, turbaned woman smiled down at her. She was slender, with café-au-lait skin and slanting black eyes. Deftly she slipped a necklace over Delice’s head, placing the cloth amulet on her chest.
‘Some
gris-gris
for you. To help Ava Ani. Now we bathe you.’
Delice felt a strange pulsing heat fill her chest. She watched as the woman filled a basin with warm water. Then she took little ceramic jars from a shelf and began adding things to the water - powders and dried leaves. Fragrance filled the room - a sweet green smell, different from the earthy, mildewy, rotten- meat odor that clung to the inside of Delice’s nostrils. While Ava Ani steeped the leaves in the basin of water, she chanted softly in a language Delice did not quite understand. It was French, to be sure, but it was from the islands - Hispaniola, perhaps. Not the dialect Delice was used to here in New Orleans. The one Madame and Monsieur spoke.
The woman found a clean white cloth and brought it and the basin over to where Delice lay motionless on the table. Ava Ani turned Delice over onto her belly. She gasped as she looked at Delice’s back. Delice had never seen her own back, but she knew it was crisscrossed with scars from the whippings Madame had administered over the fourteen years of Delice’s life. Madame had a temper, oh, yes. Ava Ani traced each scar with a smooth fingertip.
‘Each tells a story, no,
ma pauve
? But this one will have a happy ending. Oh, yes, Ava Ani will help make it so. And you will help also.’
Ava Ani began washing Delice’s thin backside with the scented water. Such tenderness! Delice could not remember ever being touched like that. No, she had only been touched to hurt, or worse.
A tiny shudder went down her spine. Ava Ani must have felt it.
‘Good, good,’ she murmured. ‘The spirits fill you.’
When Ava Ani finished bathing Delice, she combed rose oil through her hair, making her matted woolly locks become smooth waves and ringlets. Then she helped Delice sit up and dressed her in a red silk dress that fitted her perfectly, even over the chest, where Delice’s womanness was beginning to show. Delice had never owned such a fine dress.
‘Ne pas ce pauve. Maintenant, elle est belle!’
Ava Ani grinned at Delice, showing straight, white teeth. ‘Now I need a ribbon, a red silk ribbon.’ As Ava Ani looked for the ribbon, Delice glanced around.
She was in a one-room cottage, sitting on a table. There was a bed in one corner and a fireplace in the other. Everything was clean and neat, down to the mysterious bottles and boxes arranged on a shelf over the bed. Hanging down from the shelf was a cloth, embroidered with an intricate, multicolored design. A
veve
.
Delice realized that she was in the house of a
mambo
, a priest of the
voudou
. But how did she get here? Last night she had been home, at the Maison DuPlessis. And something had happened. Something bad. And was it last night? It seemed longer, somehow.
Suddenly it was hard to remember. Hard to think. Madame always called her stupid. Jeannette always said
Madame
must be stupid to think such a thing, but perhaps Madame was correct. Right now Delice felt like her head was full of wet cotton.
Ava Ani was back, tying up Delice’s new curls with a ribbon.
‘Non, non, non!’
she exclaimed. ‘Madame, she is the stupid one. I know, and soon we shall tell Erzulie too. Erzulie is a powerful
djabo
, and she will help. Madame will learn, and Monsieur too. No need to look so surprised,
ma petite
.
Oui
, Ava Ani knows all.’ She helped Delice down from the table and placed her in a chair in the corner.
‘Now,
petite fille
, you sit and rest. Wait until the eve - ning comes.’
Delice did as she was told, closing her eyes. She listened to the sounds of the Vieux Carré coming alive as the rain stopped and the clouds gave way to a hot, red, fiery dawn. The fragrance of the bougainvillea hung sweet and heavy in the air.
In front of the Maison DuPlessis, a crowd was gathered. Ava Ani joined them, listening to their conversations and waiting for a glimpse of Monsieur or Madame. The house was still, the shutters tightly closed over the windows as if in shame.
Shame,
vraiment
, thought Ava Ani. She knew the story, perhaps better than anyone in New Orleans. The DuPlessis were a prominent family in society, wealthy and handsome. But their neighbors whispered to each other about the strange sounds that came from the house late at night - screams and inhuman moans, like animals in pain. Finally the neighbors’ curiosity was at last satisfied.
Last week, Delphine DuPlessis had chased her maid all through the house until the terrified slave girl had sought refuge on the roof. Madame DuPlessis had followed her onto the roof, and somehow the girl had fallen from the roof to her death.
A cursory investigation had been made, and the DuPlessis were charged a fine for maltreatment. That was the end of that. But a few hours later, someone had set the kitchen on fire, and when the fire department arrived, they made a grisly discovery.
On the third floor, Denis DuPlessis had a private, locked chamber. When the door was opened, the officials discovered four young slave girls chained to the wall. Whips, ropes, iron pokers, and other grisly implements were found. All of the girls had had their tongues cut out so that they could not tell what had happened to them in the room, and one had her eyes sewn shut as well. They were horribly scarred and filthy, faces and limbs deformed from unspeakable abuses.
Delphine had known of her husband’s peculiarities and not only tolerated them but acted as a procuress for him. The girl who fell to her death had been selected by Delphine for the chamber but had escaped before she was bound and chained.
A shutter flicked open an inch or so, then closed. A barely perceptible movement, but Ava Ani saw. That meant Monsieur and Madame DuPlessis were still there. They would not be for long, Ava Ani knew. No, no, with their money and their position, they would make their escape from New Orleans. Back to France, perhaps.
Time is short
, thought Ava Ani.
Very well. Ce soir
.
Her hands closed tightly into fists, fingernails digging red crescents into her palms.
While Ava Ani was gone, Delice tried to remember how she got here. She found that her mind worked slowly, so slowly. It took her most of the day to piece it together.
She remembered that Madame had summoned her quite late to Madame’s fine, high-ceilinged bedchamber. Madame was thin and pale, with eyes like ice. Madame had looked her up and down. Her eyes lingered on Delice’s chest and the spot where her legs joined her body. Delice wondered if Madame could see through her threadbare calico dress and see the sprouting of soft dark hair that was growing there. Before Jeannette left, she had told her that the hairs meant you could have a baby now. Delice missed Jeannette terribly and wished with all her heart that Madame had not sold her last year.
‘It is time.’ Madame sighed. ‘Go wash, Delice, and then come back.’
‘Yes, Madame,’ Delice had replied. She quickly returned to Madame’s chamber, face and hands clean.
‘Denis wants you,’ Madame had said, and then laughed queerly. ‘Come, we will go upstairs.’
Madame’s laugh frightened Delice. But she dared not show it lest she be whipped. Maybe she would be whipped anyway; Madame was so strange to night. She timidly approached the third-floor room, her hands twisting in the pockets of her dress. Madame followed her at a distance, her shoes tapping lightly on the floor.
Monsieur opened the door to the room with a big smile and put out a hand to welcome Delice. But then a puff of wind had opened the door wide. The smell of excrement and infection and pure raw fear had filled Delice’s nostrils. She saw the bodies of the girls, chained in dumb misery, limbs smeared with faeces and blood. One had lifted her head and met Delice’s gaze, her eyes vacant under a mat of blood-crusted hair.
‘Jeannette!’ Delice breathed, recognizing her girlhood friend. Jeannette had not been sold. Jeannette had been here, for almost a year.
Delice wasted no breath screaming. Her muscles jumped to life. She pushed back Monsieur’s fat white hand and turned, moving with catlike speed. She shoved Madame to the floor and ran to the hall door. She tugged frantically at the knob, but it would not open. Madame and Monsieur were running after her, the shoes tapping out a frantic beat now.
Delice spun around and ran into one of the guest bedchambers. At the far end, a window opened onto the second-floor roof. She would climb down somehow, she thought. She flung the shutters open and crawled out onto the roof. She pressed herself into the shadows, her heart pounding.
She heard Madame say, ‘Give it to me, Denis, you fool.’ Then the rustling of Madame’s silken skirts, like a snake’s hiss, as she too made her way onto the roof.
Delice tried to make herself small, to inch her way along the sloping, slippery tiles without being seen. Madame’s pale eyes were sharp, though, and cut through the darkness like a lantern.
‘Delice!’ she called, and out of habit Delice looked up.
The clouds parted, and the moon shone down on Madame. She stood not ten paces’ distance. Her dark hair was tumbled and wild, her face ghostly white in the silver light.
In her hand was a pistol.
‘Delice, get back inside. Now!’ Madame commanded. She raised the pistol, pointing it at her.
Delice had stared at the pistol. Madame would surely kill her. But to go back inside . . . that was worse than death. Suddenly Delice was no longer afraid.
If I am to die, then I will die. But I choose.
She rose up and began to run. She heard a pop, and then a ball sang past her ear. She felt the hot rush of air against her cheek. She ran and ran, and suddenly she was flying. Flying . . .
And then there was nothing. Nothing until she had awakened here, at Ava Ani’s.
That night, two slender figures moved slowly and silently through the black-velvet darkness that enshrouded the city. They disappeared down an alley that ran behind the Maison DuPlessis and slipped over the fence that enclosed the rear yard. Ava Ani paused as two shiny blue eyes watched her from under the boxwood hedge.
‘Venez ici,’
she whispered, staring back at the eyes. Delice watched as Madame’s white Persian cat came out from under the shrubs and approached Ava Ani. It moved slowly and deliberately, like a child’s pull toy, straight toward her. Delice watched, fascinated. She hated Henri. She had been bitten and scratched countless times by that ill-tempered cat.
As Henri reached Ava Ani, she reached down and picked him up by the scruff of his neck. A blade flashed, and in a moment Henri was dead, his belly opened. Ava Ani dusted fine powder around him in intricate patterns and began to chant softly in a strange dialect.
The chant grew louder and louder, until the sound seemed to come from inside Delice’s head. Her ears pounded. Her body no longer felt heavy and clumsy. She felt light and quick - and a fever began boiling in her veins. She rose up on her toes, threw her head back, and opened her mouth.